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Evangelicals & Catholics—Beyond <TS 04.02, Feature—25,100>The Plight of the Ukrainian Catholic Church under <Palestine
Symposium—56,200>The Chicago Call Ten Years Later by Michael F. Gallo

The Chicago Call Ten Years Later

by Michael F. Gallo

It followed America’s so-called “Year of the Evangelical”—in
May 1977 a group of forty-three Evangelical leaders and thinkers convened in
an old Catholic retreat center outside Chicago to produce a call for fundamental
reforms and redirection in contemporary Protestant Evangelicalism. Particularly
prominent among their concerns was the need for Evangelicals to rediscover a
greater continuity with historic Christianity, a fuller sense of worship and
sacrament, and the importance of church unity and authority. And the tone of
the Call was set by such phrases as: “we decry,” “we confess,”
“we deplore,” “we suffer,” “we fail.” Like
a small puff of smoke on the theological horizon, The Chicago Call
betokened a type of fire, a ferment beneath the surface of an apparently prospering
Evangelicalism.

The Background

It all started with the conception of Dr. Robert Webber, professor of theology
at Wheaton College. Webber felt that contemporary Evangelicalism, far from being
in a state of robust health, was actually weak and impoverished due largely
to its insufficient rooting in the Christian tradition. Webber contacted three
associates whom he thought to be of like mind: Donald Bloesch of Dubuque Theological
Seminary, an Evangelical professor who taught such unlikely fare as a reconsideration
of monasticism and a course on the saints; Thomas Howard, a popular professor
of English at Gordon College and author of books such as Christ the Tiger;
and Peter Gillquist who had left an impressive ministry with Campus Crusade
to form a network of house churches, the New Covenant Apostolic Order (NCAO).
These men, all of them critical of popular Evangelicalism, responded positively
to Webber’s initiative. Together with a few other friends, they began
to plan a conference to discuss what they considered critical Evangelical needs.
An agenda emerged; invitations were sent out. (Unfortunately, prominent evangelicals
outside the U.S. who were invited did not attend—people like F.F. Bruce,
J.I. Packer, and John Stott). Then, on the first of May the three-day conference
convened to forge a statement.

The participants had come to explore the dimensions of a perceived dilemma;
they had not come to organize a new movement. Indeed, it is unlikely that they
could have organized much in common at the time, since there was such a diversity
of perspective among them. A number of those who represented a more traditional
Evangelicalism were surprised and disturbed by the “Anglo-Catholic”
element at the conference. (Webber, Howard, and Gillquist represented the “more
catholic,” “high church” tendencies: Webber was already a
“catholic-minded” Anglican, deeply influenced by patristic thought;
Howard would eventually convert from his twenty-five year membership in the
Anglican communion to Roman Catholicism; and Gillquist would lead his flock
into the Eastern Orthodox Church.) Still, despite a diversity of perspective
and deeply held views, a basic consensus was reached as all but one of the forty-three
conferees signed the final statement. There was a common sense of addressing
authentic needs for what Lane T. Dennis, President of Crossway Books and Good
News Publishers, which published the Call, would call a “fuller representation
of the faith.” While some saw the need for Evangelicals to return to a
“catholic” concept of the Church, others, like David Wells, saw
nothing of the kind. But common to all, was a repudiation of Evangelical reductionism,
the gross simplifications which omit and distort elements basic to historic
Christian faith and order. Eight areas of need were cited in the points of the
Call. (For the text see pages 12-14.)

Shortly after the issuance of The Chicago Call, Christianity Today,
the premiere periodical of American Evangelicalism, published the text. Later
Newsweek brought the event to the attention of the nation at large.
And still later that year, Thomas Nelson, Inc., which had sponsored the conference
and for whom Peter Gillquist was a religion editor, published a follow-up book,
The Orthodox Evangelicals. (They printed 5542 copies of the book, not
a very long run.) After that, little more was heard of The Chicago Call. In
time that small puff of smoke on the theological horizon dissipated. Yet traces
of it can still be seen from time to time, as references to it continue to pop
up.

The Call’s Ongoing Significance

Why does it still come up? What is its ongoing significance? The answer lies
in the fact that the Call represented an unusual agenda for Evangelicals. It
was truly unique in the way in which it challenged some very deeply held presuppositions.
It was newsworthy simply because it represented a new kind of stirring, a new
possibility in Evangelicalism. Whether widespread or limited, something had
begun to stir. Witness the moves of several prominent Evangelical leaders into
“high church” communions. Witness the growing demand on Evangelical
campuses and seminaries for church history and the growing interest in liturgical
worship. Witness the very fact that Evangelicals could come to such thoughtful
self-criticism.

Assessing the Call’s Impact

Yet, how great was the actual impact of the Call? how widespread the phenomenon
it represented? A good number of the original participants and several other
knowledgeable observers were kind enough to offer us their evaluation of the
Call now, some ten years after the event.

One thing became clear very quickly: there was not much of a direct impact on
people outside of the participants themselves, outside of their own circles
and ministries. The massive conglomerate that makes up Protestant Evangelicalism
scarcely felt a tremor. Peter Gillquist gives perhaps the most positive assessment
of the Call’s value. He believes that the Call “put Evangelical
Christians on notice that it is indeed possible to be both Evangelical and historically
orthodox.” In his own experience he has worked with a number of people
“who were awakened to Orthodox Christianity through the Chicago Call”
and joined the Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC), which he helped to found in
1979. (In 1987, he led 2,000 of the EOC people, approximately two-thirds of
the original group, into the “canonical Orthodox Church,” where
they are now known as the Antiochan Evangelical Orthodox Mission.) For the EOC
people the Call would naturally be a milestone in their spiritual pilgrimage.
Still, this barely constitutes the proverbial drop in the bucket.

Thomas Howard, on the other hand, takes a far less optimistic view of the
Call’s overall impact: “It came to virtually nothing.” Although
he knows of a few people who have been encouraged by the reading of the set
of essays in The Orthodox Evangelicals, “people who were already
reading the Church Fathers and exercised about the mystery of the Church,”
Howard says, “I have not seen any impact on those whose ecclesiology has
been comfortably Evangelical.” Like most of the signatories who responded
to our queries, Donald Bloesch takes a middle course, suggesting some positive
results. The Call may have “aroused Evangelicals for Christian unity,
for church authority, for creeds and confessions, and for the catholic heritage
of the Church,” but, he is quick to add, “I don’t see any
move toward a practical appropriation of this catholic heritage of the Church.”

Limiting Factors

If the Call truly offered such a unique agenda and addressed authentic needs
in the Evangelical community, why was the impact of the Call not greater? Dr.
Dennis points to one limiting factor: there simply was no organizational structure
established to implement its concerns. As examples of more effective conferences,
he cites The Chicago Declaration which gave birth to Evangelicals for
Social Action, the Lausanne Covenant which set up an ongoing committee
to carry out its concerns, and the ICBI (International Council on Biblical Inerrancy)
which recently completed an extensive, ten-year program of publishing and conferences.
Apparently, the initiators of the Chicago Call conference had no intention of
forming any sort of follow-up organization or networking to reach the rank and
file of Evangelicalism. In Webber’s response to the New Oxford Review’s
“Symposium on the Chicago Call” (May 1979) he stated his purpose
was simply to feel out the Evangelical community “to determine what kinds
of concerns were shared.” No doubt there was the hope that the issuance
of the Call itself would elicit some type of spontaneous, favorable reaction.
Follow-up was left to individual efforts in writing, preaching, and teaching.
The goals of the conference were general and open-ended.

Another factor which enters in is that the real audience to whom the Call was
directed was itself very limited; the Call was not a popular address. Benedict
Viviano, the sole Roman Catholic participant, saw the Chicago Call as “an
elite appeal to an elite.” This was unquestionably true. Yet, even in
the academic circles of Evangelical institutions, the Call only had a marginal
effect. It spurred some discussion, but generated no momentum.

The General Insensitivity to the Call

Arguably, the climate in Evangelicalism was not ripe, not responsive. There
was no significant, spontaneous reaction from any quarter. The Call failed to
spawn, even indirectly, other efforts reflecting its agenda. Neither have there
been many unrelated efforts of a similar nature. Webber notes that “Evangelicals
by and large are still ahistorical and insensitive to the thought of the Church
prior to the Reformation.” Howard says, “I think that Protestant
Evangelicalism is not moving in the direction which the Call indicated. It’s
very vigorously asserting quite a different ecclesiology and very energetically.”
Whether it should have been or not, the Evangelical community has simply not
been responsive to these issues.

Gillquist, ever the active agent promoting his cause, seems to take a different
view and notes a growing interest in certain issues. “I get numerous letters
each month from Evangelical Protestant pastors—many of them quite well-known—who
are interested in learning more about Orthodoxy and even in the possibility
of converting to the Orthodox Church. A professor in the graduate school at
Wheaton College told me just last week that he knows of thirty-six Wheaton faculty
members and their families who have joined sacramental and liturgical churches
in recent years. Students at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California,
tell us that, conservatively, one-fourth to one-third of the student body favor
liturgical worship and the centrality of the holy sacraments.” Such sentiments
befit a mover and shaker like Gillquist, whose stated intention is to make a
significant Orthodox impact on America and who is largely pitching his efforts
to dissatisfied Evangelicals. Perhaps there is a potential for greater response,
but to develop it will require the dedicated talents of an organizer and propagandist
like Gillquist, who would continue aggressively to pitch these ideas in wider
Evangelical circles.

Wariness of Hidden Agendas and Roman Catholicism

Still for all of that, there are definite obstacles to promoting these concerns,
not the least of which is a wariness of a hidden and alien agenda—especially
where that agenda seems to serve the interest of some party or group on the
fringe of Evangelicalism. Kevin Springer, presently an editor for the Vineyard
ministry and formerly a member of the NCAO (an early Gillquist ministry), says,
“groups and people like the NCAO and Dale Vree (editor of the New
Oxford Review) and Thomas Howard have left Evangelical Protestantism, thus
forfeiting their right to speak to Evangelicals.” It is not that Springer
is particularly opposed to things Catholic or Orthodox. In fact, he lauds the
charismatic movement, of which he is a part, as “the bastion of Catholic
evangelicalism”; but he seems, like certain others, to resent what he
perceives as a co-opting of the Evangelical heritage.

Beyond a wariness of hidden agendas, there exists within Evangelicalism a deep-seated
and widely-held antagonism to anything that is too Catholic: Anglo, Roman, or
even Eastern Orthodox. More than one of our respondents questioned the voice
being sounded by the Call. In the view of David Wells, “Anglo-Catholics”
ran the conference for their own interests. Hence, for him the Call was never
an authentic Evangelical voice. “The questions addressed were good,”
he would say, “but the theology within which they were addressed was bad.”

Dr. Roger Nicole of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, expressed similar reservations
regarding those who organized the event. “I evaluate its impact as zero”—explaining
its failure as largely due to a lack of consensus on the issues of the Church
and sacraments. “I for one was amazed to find at the conference a group
of people who were really crypto-Greek Orthodox or crypto-Catholic, whose views
I would not even remotely have thought to consider evangelical.” Although
in the end Dr. Nicole did sign the statement, he explained that “the concept
of sacraments was diluted so much that what was said could be acceptable by
Evangelicals.”

Even Donald Bloesch was careful to distance himself from what he has seen in
some churches as “a creeping sacramentalism and a creeping sacerdotalism,”
though he did not consider that anyone at the conference represented such tendencies.

Changing Times

Naturally, changes in the past ten years have affected the perceived needs within
Evangelicalism. How has the Call stood the test of a decade? Some say it is
outdated; others say it is more relevant today than ever. Dr. Marvin Anderson,
a signatory and professor of Church History at the Baptist Bethel Seminary,
felt that the Call was “lost under the weightier concerns of the Lima
Declaration and Inter-Confessional Dialogue in Europe and North America.”
Howard Loewen, associate professor of theology and divisional chairperson at
Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, California, sees the Call as
“an articulate theological statement that prophetically addressed a number
of the key problems faced by a North American Evangelical tradition in transition.”
For him, the growth of the forces of pluralism since 1977 present Evangelicals
with the need “to transpose the constructive proposals of The Chicago
Call from a paradigm that stressed continuity to one that stresses the need
for change and to provide a rationale for diversity within unity.”

For Donald Bloesch, however, today’s emerging needs only confirm the Call’s
stress on continuity. In his view this is strikingly represented by the erosion
of nothing less than the doctrine of the Trinity. The underlying problem, it
would seem, is just what the Call diagnosed, historical discontinuity. “I
think that the problem has accelerated,” says Bloesch. “The ‘new
spirituality’ and the New Age movement have penetrated into Evangelicalism.
Heterodoxy is much more evident now in Evangelical circles than it was then.”
He goes on to note a number of pressing social concerns requiring some type
of Evangelical response. “The abortion holocaust, for example, not mentioned
in The Chicago Call statement, is a burning social evil that should be addressed
by any confessing church. It’s completely out of control and it’s
an issue tearing apart the moral fabric of our country. The idea of a possible
nuclear holocaust is another social evil that needs to be addressed.”
A number of respondents expressed a need to call together a new forum to address
these and other critical issues which have emerged in the past decade.

A Concern for Unity and Cohesion

Of the points addressed in the Call, none has continued to impress our respondents
with a greater relevance than the issue of unity. Dr. Welde, head of Presbyterians
United for Biblical Concerns, expressed concern for “the fragmentation
within evangelicalism.” “I think Evangelicalism is suffering from
the same kind of pluralism we’re suffering from in the society at large,”
he states. “Evangelicalism lacks a unitive thrust.” Others, including
David Wells, also noted the problem of an escalating fragmentation within Evangelicalism.
“The problem is that the Evangelical center is collapsing because its
substance has been eroded.” Dr. Lovelace, professor of Church History
at Gordon-Conwell agrees. “Evangelicals are presently in disarray because
of the emergence of a number of internal problems.” In his view, recent
years have seen “a polarization between a hard-line right-wing rallying
around concern for biblical inerrancy, and a left-wing accommodating more to
Liberal currents. Meanwhile, the rise of the Religious Right has made many observers
nervous, and the emergence of moral scandals among its major leaders has shaken
confidence in all sectors of Evangelicalism.” Lovelace goes on to say,
“In view of these emerging problems The Chicago Call appears as one of
the strongest statements calling for maturity and internal reformation within
the New Evangelicalism. It seems even more relevant now than it was when it
was issued.”

Ironically, while there seems to be a significant consensus on the need for
Evangelical unity and cohesion and growing alarm over its apparently eroding
center, the practical questions concerning that unity bring up the type of problems
which polarized and limited the impact of the Call: what type of unity should
it be? how would it be brought about? and what would the substance or definition
of its theological center be? In the opinion of more than one perceptive observer,
it is highly questionable whether exercises in Protestant scholasticism can
shore up what contemporary culture has eroded. What then? Looking at the dilemma
from a position outside Protestant Evangelicalism, Benedict Viviano offered
this provocative comment, “[The Evangelicals] may need a tradition of
church authority which tries to combine biblical fidelity with a right division
of gospel and law, which takes seriously the Petrine ministry of unity and world-wide
oversight, and which though synodical results in more than limp conclusions
which merely endorse contemporary fads.” He then adds, “This would
indeed be a challenge.” Indeed it would be, even apart from Protestantism’s
long-standing difficulties with the place of a Petrine ministry.

Conclusions

Perhaps Evangelicalism is approaching a crisis point in its not-so-long history.
Though its roots go back to the Reformation, contemporary Evangelicalism essentially
begins with those who, in the years after World War II, distanced themselves
from Fundamentalism’s narrowness and reaction. And now some of the heirs
of this broad movement are struggling with a new but similar necessity.

The Chicago Call, as we have indicated, was part of this ferment. It was neither
the province of crypto-Catholics nor the limited agenda of a few fringe antiquarians
who happened to like patristics and liturgy. Such characterizations are unfair.
The Call’s purpose was serious and thoughtful in addressing Evangelical
reductionisms and seeking to affirm a “fuller representation of the faith.”
Perhaps its actual achievement was simply to express or represent these concerns,
these needs, and a certain ferment among some Evangelical intellectuals. Limited
though the phenomenon may have been, it should by no means be disregarded. It
is worth watching, for things from the center to the borders of Evangelicalism
must inevitably continue to change and develop.

So far, the specific points of the Call, which we may characterize as being
catholic and evangelical, have not been communicated in a compelling way to
many Evangelicals. But perhaps the point is beginning to be made—that,
yes, catholic and evangelical qualities and perspectives can exist together
and are meant to complement each other. The Charismatics have accomplished incomparably
more than the Call in breaking down barriers between the various traditions
and showing these possibilities. But there is still a need for an articulate,
theological addressing of certain issues. And here the Call has had a contribution
to make, and both its progress and its limitations are instructive. It offers
a unique test case, not only for people concerned about things evangelical and
catholic, but for those interested in the dynamics of change and reform in any
sector of the Church.

Since the Call

In the nearly eleven years since the Call what has happened with
the four leading initiators?

Robert Webber

After the conference Webber published Common Roots, which some
saw as more in keeping with the direction of the Call than the Call itself.
It sold 2000 copies and is now reprinted as The Divine Tapestry.
Ten years later his own thinking has not changed. “I have only added
to the depth of my understanding,” he says. “More than anything
else, worship has captured the imagination of evangelicals.” But,
he adds, “the historic understanding of worship is still sorely
lacking.” In addition to having written two books on the subject,
Webber also conducts seminars in local churches on the nature and practical
appropriation of historic worship.

Donald Bloesch

In 1982 Donald Bloesch published a two-volume work, Essentials of
Evangelical Theology, in which he “tried to build bridges between
Catholic and Evangelical faith” (New Oxford Review), In
1983 Doubleday published his The Future of Evangelical Christianity:
A Call for Unity Amid Diversity, which in part addresses some of
the concerns of the Chicago Call conference. Concerned about the erosion
of the traditional Christian deposit by various heterodox forces today,
his latest work is Battle for the Trinity. His perspective after
ten years is that “the forces of secularism or secularization have
penetrated evangelicalism today.”

Thomas Howard

Since the call Thomas Howard wrote two books on its theme, Evangelical
is Not Enough—a critique of evangelical reductionism, and Splendor
in the Ordinary—expressing a sacramental view of life (both
now out of print). He was received into the Roman Church in 1985. Says
Howard, “I believe that a full and sober consideration and understanding
of what the mystery of the church is would in fact lead a man to make
his obedience to the ancient church—Roman or Orthodox.” Howard
would now understand the eight points of the Call from a traditionalist
Roman Catholic viewpoint.

Peter Gillquist

In 1979 Gillquist published The Physical Side of Being Spiritual.
He and several NCAO fellow-signers formed the Evangelical Orthodox Church
that year. The end of the road for Gillquist (and Jon Braun) was in the
East with the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese. (One-third of the EOC under
the leadership of Kenneth Jensen did not enter the “canonical Orthodox
Church” but remain the EOC.) Gillquist is active in church planting
and evangelism. He says, “Ten years later [my thinking] is hopefully
more precise in terms of Orthodox theology. For example, I am stronger
on the role of the sacraments and Church unity now.”

Michael F. Gallo, a graduate of Wheaton College,
is an associate fellow in the Diakonian Society (a religious order) in Chicago,
Illinois.

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